


Up From the Ocean (With a Cape?)

by GayAsAnArrow



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Knock Knock, Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)-centric, Sephiroth canonically walked out of the ocean like some sort of swamp thing, Sephiroth is happier as a world-killing demi-god than as a human being and that's Bad(tm), Sephiroth's World Tour, who's there?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 18:44:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19179205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayAsAnArrow/pseuds/GayAsAnArrow
Summary: /Woman on the Beach/That's right!! It totally skipped my mind!There was something I was supposed to tell you.That's right! It's about that!It was yesterday. A man wearing a black cloak came up from the ocean.I think he had tickets for the Gold Saucer... no, that wasn't it... I wonder if it was all just an illusion?-or-Faced with an ocean, Sephiroth chooses to walk.





	Up From the Ocean (With a Cape?)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to yinza.com for the excellent script quoted in the summary http://www.yinza.com/Fandom/Script.html

Standing on the edge of the ocean, staring out over the endlessness of it, he watched the little bursts of color and movement, distorted by the motion of water. This world loved to twist what was true. To refract and reflect reality until it was unknowable.

He held out a hand. Reached out with his vast attention--spread worldwide by the splinters of himself sown throughout the world. Felt the tug of the black materia’s power reverberate through the fragments of himself. Triangulated the sensation. It took time. He was still new. Still not used to having more than one presence, more than one reality. But the answer he came to was the same. Mathematically stubborn in a way that even this world couldn’t distort.

The materia was on the other continent.

Sephiroth, still floating on the bubble of contentedness that had grown inside him at his defiance of the destiny he’d been programmed for, allowed himself a luxury.

“Fuck.” He proclaimed to the empty waves, and laughed at his own childish glee.

There was so much he’d missed out on, trying to be what he’d been made for. A warrior, a SOLDIER, a general, a cold and immovable being. Like one of Scarlett’s machines, but given flesh and blood and a mind. All the better to kill with.

But he was not what he’d been told. He had been made more literally than he’d thought. So much more scientific than simple brainwashing. (He’d finally put a name to what had been done to him when he read about it in the manual his other SOLDIERs had to read. It was described as an enemy tactic, and he’d nearly laughed aloud.)

No, they had built him. Engineered him out of fragments of an alien specimen. Altered and twisted and tortured and—

The network of his pieces writhed with his agitation, and he let out a breath. It escaped him in a bitter chuckle. It was done now. The president dead, the others to follow soon. The whole world to follow soon enough. This world he detested. This world he loved. This world he would save as he had been saved--by changing it at its very core understanding of itself. No longer a floating, aimless being, used and drained and devoured by everything that touched it. He would remake it. Would give it new purpose, as Jenova had given him purpose. His mother… He would teach this planet her glory.

But first. First there was the problem of the ocean. The problem of an isolated landscape he’d walked through to arrive here, revelling in his aloneness, his independence, his strange and new connection. He knew his real body was far away. Knew it would take time to retrieve it. For now he was only puppeting himself. Moving through this world as a ghost might. But even if he’d been in his real body, his true form, impossibly powerful, immutable, immovable, GLORIOUS—

Well. Even then, he had never learned how to swim. And even if he had known it seemed so… Undignified. Not to mention that it would be difficult with Masamune. And the potential of having to remove his boots and coat… No, that wouldn’t do.

Theoretically he could make a boat, but… The word ‘pedestrian’ came to mind. That was how a HUMAN would cross an ocean. And he no longer wished to be associated with that breed of beings.

No. Sephiroth had to cross the ocean, but nothing and no one--not humanity, not this world, not the water itself--would tell him how to. So he did as he had always done. As he intended to do from the start. He moved forward with deliberate steps and with every expectation that the universe would accommodate his movement.

The good news, he found as he walked deeper and deeper into the ocean (over rocks over sand past the flickering motion of panicked fish) was that though he had no physical joy in this form, no exaltation at wind or heat, no hunger and no capacity to eat, no weariness and therefore no rest-- _ and if he had been thinking clearly perhaps he’d have known that as death _ \--he no longer really needed to breathe. So a deep breath to let the saltwater fill his lungs (he couldn’t taste the salt, he couldn’t feel his lungs, no burning, no pain,  _ nothing _ ) and he was sufficiently weighed down.

He found, as he stepped out over the drop down into deeper water, into the dark, that he liked it. The water moved around him, resisted him, but it was pliable. Moldable. It accommodated his shape and his movement with the barest display of force. Negligible to one such as him. A human would have been crushed. A human would have drowned. A human  _ would have felt something he couldn’tfeelanythingwhereamIwhatamIwhycanIfeelsomuch. _

He laughed. It was freeing, to laugh. He’d never really indulged before. That line in his life now that he only had the word ‘before’ to describe. When he was bound by everything. Contracts, work, social obligations, societal constructs, laws, morals… Physics. Everything.

Now he landed in a cloud of sand, heavy, at the bottom of the ocean and kept walking. Steps took longer, but they made no sound. Though he was aware of a thousand things moving they were all distant. Muffled. He watched them move. Little flashing insignificant lives. He paused for a few hours at one point to watch the petty drama of life or death as sharks swarmed through a mass of smaller fish, devouring anything that didn’t move in time. It made him smile. He’d never really understood the appeal of daytime TV, but perhaps he would have enjoyed it if it was like this.

He moved on, content in the balance of predator and prey that soon he would erase. The scales had never been balanced properly. He would wipe the slate clean and begin again. With a better order. With caution and care, in a new home, with a new beginning, with his mother’s vision of an ordered and perfected existence.

And if somewhere he was screaming, somewhere he was also laughing too. He was so many places. So many things. It would take an eternity to unravel them all, and he relished the prospect of that work.

The ocean got darker, till it was only his glowing eyes, and the shining lights of predators around him. The ocean dwellers swam close, inspecting, curious. Darted through his drifting hair. He let them. Ignored them. Was above them. Paused only once as something vast shifted in the deep. Something ancient. He held out a hand. Let the massive tendril touch his gloved fingers. Felt nothing. Took a little of its genetics for himself with a concentrated effort. SOmething this old might be of use.

And as an added benefit, it had part of him now, and he had one more node of information in his ever-expanding web. Perhaps if pushed he could create those same inexorable tendrils now, and crush his enemies as he could tell the beast behind him had crushed whales.

He started to get bored after a few hours. The alien landscape of the undersea world was, for the most part, bleak. The ancient wonders held little appeal for him in comparison to his ambition. He had places to be, and the ocean was slowing him down. Still, he tried to find interest in what he could. Left traces of himself through the water. A little trace of poison added to the blood he’d left swirling in the lifestream when it attempted to rend him down to his component parts.

_ I’m still here, I’m still in the lifestream, stop, stop, stop, give me back my— _

Perhaps hit had done him a favor, though. Some components were better left rended. Rent? Hm. Perhaps he could find a dictionary wherever he was headed and double check.

When he emerged again it was into a world too bright. He had no idea how long had passed. His infallible internal clock had been destroyed with so much of the rest of him. But it no longer mattered. Time, light, reality. Temporary. All of it. And he was not.

He stepped out of the ocean with the water spilling off him as though it were eager to get away. He let it trail out of his lungs with a forceful breath rather than an unseemly cough. He wouldn’t have bothered, but there was someone he needed. A piece of his web that was constantly in motion. A sleeper agent who would, with time, provide everything he’d needed. He just had to ensure that the motivation was in place.

“Woah,” A light voice said. A woman, lounging on the beach, lifting her sunglasses off her face. “You just, like… Came out of the water.”

Sephiroth smiled. That would do.

“Yes,” He said. “I’m going to the Gold Saucer.”

“Okay?” She stared. Transfixed. He had that effect. “You’re, like… Good tho?” 

“Better than good.” Sephiroth said, touching her arm as he passed, implanting a fragment of his will. “I am, in fact, number one.”

He’d laughed at himself. The only humor he would ever have again, and more than enough. The woman laughed too. Across the world broken bodies laughed. Deep in the ocean a massive squid churned in a way it didn’t fully understand.

And the very next day his target arrived. The woman told a harried man with blond hair and wild eyes about the man in the black cape who’d walked out of the waves and towards the Golden Saucer.

Around Sephiroth the web danced with joy, as spider webs do when prey is trapped.

  
  


**_Woman on the Beach_ **

_ That's right!! It totally skipped my mind! _

_ There was something I was supposed to tell you. _

_ That's right! It's about that! _

_ It was yesterday. A man wearing a black cloak came up from the ocean. _

_ I think he had tickets for the Gold Saucer... no, that wasn't it... I wonder if it was all just an illusion? _


End file.
